Brief: Religion is Not Belief? (w/Blair Hodges)
Conspirituality4 Touko 2024

Brief: Religion is Not Belief? (w/Blair Hodges)

The late historian of religion James Carse (1932-2020) made a radical proposal in his 2012 book, The Religious Case Against Belief. He argued that beliefs, far from being central to or definitive of religion, are actually antithetical to religious community. A religion’s historical longevity, he argued, depends on its ability to absorb and neutralize beliefs—epistemological dead ends built on willful ignorance. “The challenge to religion,” Carse says, “is not its opponents from without, but its believers from within, and the real enemy of religion is belief itself.” What does this mean for a project like Conspirituality and other projects of disillusionment carried out in the shadow of New Atheism and other modern skeptical movements? Blair Hodges of the Fireside and Family Proclamations podcasts joins Matthew to discuss a potential casualty of the battle against religious extremism: a nuanced understanding of religion itself. Show Notes The Religious Case Against Belief by James P. Carse Fireside with Blair Hodges Family Proclamations w/ Blair Hodges Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jaksot(771)

293: Trump and Fascist Dementia

293: Trump and Fascist Dementia

As Trump surges his Gestapo and threatens to annex new territory, his brain is collapsing. He’s sundowning on Truth Social, nodding off in meetings, slurring words, slurping at the saliva pooling in h...

29 Tammi 58min

Bonus Sample: Simone Weil: We Have Obligations Before We Have Rights

Bonus Sample: Simone Weil: We Have Obligations Before We Have Rights

Listen to the full episode Simone Weil was skeptical about the project of “rights.” They argued that obligations come before rights, and that rights only become real when obligations are recognized a...

26 Tammi 5min

Brief: Prospirituality Predictions for 2026

Brief: Prospirituality Predictions for 2026

If conspirituality names the ways religion and spirituality are weaponized to justify power, prospirituality points to religious traditions doing the opposite: grounding resistance, ethical clarity, a...

24 Tammi 28min

292: Women of Jan 6 (w/ Noelle Cook)

292: Women of Jan 6 (w/ Noelle Cook)

Noelle Cook’s The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging is the first ethnography of conspirituality, and it comes via someone who was able to really embed themselves in a volatile...

22 Tammi 1h 8min

Bonus Sample: Oil, Power, and Theocracy

Bonus Sample: Oil, Power, and Theocracy

In 1953 the CIA and MI6 participated in a coup d’etat in Iran. That true sentence (and what usually follows) can create an oversimplified distortion of history—and present. But Iran is in the news aga...

19 Tammi 7min

MAHA’s Selective Skepticism

MAHA’s Selective Skepticism

Whole milk is back! The war on protein is over! Mainline meat! Derek investigates the new inverted pyramid and everything lacking in the new dietary guidelines. Show Notes The New Dietary Guidelin...

17 Tammi 23min

291: My Chinese Buddhist Israeli AI Guru

291: My Chinese Buddhist Israeli AI Guru

“Train your mind gently, not to deny what is hard, but to see what is still good” implores the monk sharing spiritual messages to his 2.5 million Instagram followers. Clad in an orange robe—well, some...

15 Tammi 1h 6min

Bonus Sample: Overwelled

Bonus Sample: Overwelled

From Andrew Huberman's Goop collab and Mel Robbins' protein shots to MAHA flipping the long-defunct food pyramid and making meningitis great again, the first full week of 2026 was off to quite a start...

12 Tammi 4min

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